Maternal Tenacles
author's note:
A savanna is wasted only within the conditions of this poem.
MATERNAL TENTACLES
Our forerunner
--Lucy--
was discovered in
a wasted savanna
yet recently when
I looked down and within
I found the tiny skeleton
in my lonely wicker basket--!--
yes, this white man
carries a small black woman-child
in his belly--!--who knows
what we hold!
Now, having seen
I can not reject
something so delicate:
the paternal and maternal
have become as one:
I’m determined to return
that desiccated fetus to life--
as I soothe her in my sling
I begin to lactate in the soul,
yes---
I can feel my milk
slowly expanding--
I can not stop this spill--
I can not stop without drying--
I can not stop this spill
from spreading its tentacles
--albeit, tentatively--
beyond the borders of my domain--
desirous of touch, yet
still afraid:
my feelers have encountered
blunt objects before
and been blunted.
But as I continue
this fledgling spreading
I can see the snail gray
beneath Lucy's fingertips
begin to bleed back to pink.
Soon I can open this box
without fearing the hard light
will crush her to powder--
we will prove
even a desert can be fertile:
we will defy this dryness--
we will bloom.
© 2012, Michael R. Patton
earnest audio
Labels: feeling, growth, healing, lucy, maternal, Michael R. Patton, mother, new age, poetry, resurrection, spirituality, transformation
posted by Michael at 1:30 PM
3 Comments:
Such a fragile poem ... quite fitting for Lucy. She starts her exhibit here in Houston, I believe.
There's an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts now that's been here for a while. I really must get over there before it goes somewhere else. I forget what it's called now, something about the mind? No, that's not right. (The inside/outside views of the human body is what it's all about, showing the interconnectiveness of it all.) Supposed to be quite extraordinary.
While I have little interest in going to see Lucy, I thought you might like to know, Michael, that -- in my opinion -- there has been a great deal of sacredness and respect for her evidenced in the advance publicity for this show, and in interviews with the museum staff and various archaeologists.
I just remembered the name of the exhibit ... "Body Works" (might be one word only, but the name's correct).
Ye Gods! Not the Museum of Fine Arts ... the Museum of Natural Science. Come on, Goldenrod, focus!
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